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Expositor's Bible Commentary Psalm 6:1 To the chief Musician on Neginoth upon Sheminith, A Psalm of David. O LORD, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. Psalm 6:1-10 THE theme and progress of thought in this psalm are very common, especially in those attributed to David. A soul compassed by enemies, whose hate has all but sapped the life out of it, "catches at God’s skirts and prays," and thence wins confidence which anticipates deliverance and victory. There are numerous variations of this leitmotif , and each of the psalms which embody it has its own beauty, its own discords resolved into its own harmonies. The representation of the trouble of spirit as producing wasting of the body is also frequent, and is apparently not to be taken as metaphor, though not to be pressed, as if the psalmist were at once struck with the two calamities of hostility and disease, but the latter is simply the result of the former, and will disappear with it. It is needless to look for a historical occasion of the psalm, but to an ear that knows the tones of sorrow, or to a heart that has itself uttered them, the supposition that in these pathetic cries we hear only a representative Israelite bewailing the national ruin sounds singularly artificial. If ever the throb of personal anguish found tears and a voice, it does so in this psalm. Whoever wrote it wrote with his blood. There are in it no obvious references to events in the recorded life of David, and hence the ascription of it to him must rest on something else than the interpretation of the psalm. The very absence of such allusions is a fact to be dealt with by those who deny the accuracy of the attribution of authorship. But, however that question may be settled, the worth of this little plaintive cry depends on quite other considerations than the discovery of the name of the singer or the nature of his sorrow. It is a transcript of a perennial experience, a guide for a road which all feet have to travel. Its stream runs turbid and broken at first, but calms and clears as it flows. It has four curves or windings, which can scarcely be called strophes without making too artificial a framework for such a simple and spontaneous gush of feeling. Still the transitions are clear enough. In Psalm 6:1-3 we have a cluster of sharp, short cries to God for help, which all mean the same thing. In each of these the great name of Jehovah is repeated, and in each the plea urged is simply the sore need of the suppliant. These are no "vain repetitions," which are pressed out of a soul by the grip of the rack; and it is not "taking the name of the Lord in vain" when four times in three short verses the passionate cry for help is winged with it as the arrow with its feather. Two thoughts fill the psalmist’s consciousness, or rather one thought-the Lord-and one feeling-his pains. In Psalm 6:1 the Hebrew makes "in Thine anger" and "in Thine hot wrath" emphatic by setting these two phrases between the negative and the verb: "Not in Thine anger rebuke me; not in Thy heat chasten me." He is willing to submit to both rebuke and chastisement; but he shrinks appalled from that form of either which tends to destruction, not to betterment. There are chastisements in tenderness, which express God’s love, and there are others which manifest His alienation and wrath. This psalmist did not think that all Divine retribution was intended for reformation. To him there was such a thing as wrath which slew. Jeremiah has the same distinction, { Jeremiah 10:24 } and the parallel has been made an argument for the later date of the psalm. Cheyne and others assume that Jeremiah is the original, but that is simple conjecture, and the prophet’s conspicuous fondness for quotations from older authors makes the supposition more probable that the psalm is the earlier. Resignation and shrinking blend in that cry, in which a heart conscious of evil confesses as well as implores, recognises the justice and yet deprecates the utmost severity of the blow. He who asks, "Not in Thine anger rebuke me," thereby submits to loving chastisement. Then follow in Psalm 6:2-3 three short petitions, which are as much cries of pain as prayers, and as much prayers as cries of pain. In the two former the prayer is put first, and its plea second; in the last the order is reversed, and so the whole is, as it were, enclosed in a circlet of prayer. Two words make the petition in each clause, "Have mercy on me, Jehovah" (tastelessly corrected by Gratz into "Revive me"), and "Heal me, Jehovah." The third petition is daring and pregnant in its incompleteness. In that emphatic "And Thou, Jehovah," the psalmist looks up, with almost reproach in his gaze, to the infinite Personality which seems so unaccountably passive. The hours that bring pain are leaden footed, and their moments each seem an eternity. The most patient sufferer may cry, "How long?" and God will not mistake the voice of pain for that of impatience. This threefold prayer, with its triple invocation, has a triple plea, which is all substantially one. His misery fills the psalmist’s soul, and he believes that God will feel for him. He does not at first appeal to God’s revealed character, except in so far as the plaintive reiteration of the Divine name carries such an appeal, but he spreads out his own wretchedness, and he who does that has faith in God’s. pity. "I am withered away" like a faded flower. "My bones are vexed"; -the physical effects of his calamity, "bones" being put for the whole body, and regarded as the seat of sensibility, as is frequently the usage. "Vexed" is too weak a rendering. The idea is that of the utmost consternation. Not only the body, but the soul, partakes in the dismay. The "soul" is even more shaken than the "bones"; that is to say, mental agitation rather than physical disease (and the latter as the result of the former) troubles the psalmist. We can scarcely fail to remember the added sanctity which these plaintive words have received, since they were used by the Prince of sufferers when all but in sight of the cross. The next turn of thought includes Psalm 6:4-5 , and is remarkable for the new pleas on which it rests the triple prayer, "Return; deliver; save." God is His own motive, and His self-revelation in act must always be self-consistent. Therefore the plea is presented, "for Thy lovingkindness sake." It beseeches Him to be what He is, and to show Himself as still being what He had always been. The second plea is striking both in its view of the condition of the dead and in its use of that view as an argument with God. Like many other psalmists, the writer thinks of Sheol as the common gathering place of the departed, a dim region where they live a poor shadowy life, inactive, joyless, and all but godless, inasmuch as praise, service, and fellowship with Him have ceased. That view is equally compatible with the belief in a resurrection and the denial of it, for it assumes continued individual consciousness. It is the prevailing tone in the Psalter and in Job and Ecclesiastes. But in some psalms, which embody the highest rapture of inward and mystical devotion, the sense of present union with God bears up the psalmist into the sunlight of the assurance that against such a union death can have no power, and we see the hope of immortality in the very act of dawning on the devout soul. May we not say that the subjective experience of the reality of communion with God now is still the path by which the certainty of its perpetuity in a future life is reached? The objective proof in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is verified by this experience. The psalmists had not the former, but, having the latter, they attained to at all events occasional confidence in a blessed life beyond. But the tone of such triumphant glimpses as Psalm 16:10 ; Psalm 17:15 ; Psalm 49:15 ; Psalm 73:24 , is of a higher mood than that of this and other psalms, which probably represent the usual view of devout Hebrews. The fact, as it appeared to those at the then stage of revelation, that remembrance and praise of God were impossible in Sheol, is urged as a plea. That implies the psalmist’s belief that God cared for men’s praise-a thought which may be so put as to make Him an almighty Selfishness, but which in its true aspect is the direct inference from the faith that He is infinite Love. It is the same sweet thought of Him which Browning has when he makes God say, "I miss my little human praise." God’s joy in men’s praise is joy in men’s love and in their recognition of His love. The third turn of feeling is in Psalm 6:6-7 . The sense of his own pains which, in the two previous parts of the psalm, had been contending with the thought of God, masters the psalmist in these dreary verses, in which the absence of the name of God is noteworthy as expressive of his absorption in brooding over His misery. The vehemence of the manifestations of sorrow and the frankness of the record of these manifestations in the song are characteristic of the emotional, demonstrative Eastern temperament, and strike our more reticent dispositions as excessive. But however expressed in unfamiliar terms, the emotion which wails in these sad verses is only too familiar to men of all temperaments. All sad hearts are tempted to shut out God and to look only at their griefs. There is a strange pleasure in turning round the knife in the wound and recounting the tokens of misery. This man feels some ease in telling how he had exhausted his strength with groaning and worn away the sleepless night with weeping. Night is ever the nurse of heavy thought, and stings burn again then. The hyperbolical expressions that he had set his bed afloat with his tears and "melted" it (as the word means) are matched by the other hyperboles which follow, describing the effect of this unmeasured weeping on his eyes. He had wept them away, and they were bleared and dim like those of an old man. The cause of this passion of weeping is next expressed, in plain words, which connect this turn of the thought with the next verses, and seem to explain the previously mentioned physical pain, as either metaphorical or consequent on the hostility of "mine adversaries." But even while thus his spirit is bitterly burying itself in his sorrows the sudden certainty of the answer to his prayer flashes on him. "Sometimes a light surprises," as Cowper, who too well knew what it was to be worn with groaning, has sung. That swift conviction witnesses its origin in a Divine inspiration by its very suddenness. Nothing has changed in circumstances, but everything has changed in aspect. Wonder and exultation throb in the threefold assurance that the prayer is heard. In the two former clauses the "hearing" is regarded as a present act; in the latter the "receiving" is looked for in the future. The process which is usually treated as one simple act, is here analysed. "God has heard; therefore God will receive"- i.e. , answer-"my weeping prayer." Whence came that confidence but from the breath of God on the troubled spirit? "The peace of God" is ever the reward of submissive prayer. In this confidence a man can front the close-knit ring of enemies, of whatever sort they be, and bid them back. Their triumphant dismissal is a vivid way of expressing the certainty of their departure, with their murderous hate unslaked and baulked. "Mine enemies" are "workers of iniquity." That is a daring assumption, made still more remarkable by the previous confession that the psalmist’s sorrow was God’s rebuke and chastening. But a man has the right to believe that his cause is God’s in the measure in which he makes God’s cause his. In the confidence of prayer heard, the psalmist can see "things that are not as though they were," and, though no change has passed on the beleaguering hosts, triumphs in their sure rout and retreat. Very significantly does he predict in Psalm 6:10 the same fate for them which he bad bewailed as his own. The "dismay" which had afflicted his soul shall pass to them ("sore vexed"). Since God "returns" ( Psalm 6:4 ), the enemy will have to "return" in baffled abandonment of their plans, and be "ashamed" at the failure of their cruel hopes. And all this will come as suddenly as the glad conviction had started up in the troubled heart of the singer. His outward life shall be as swiftly rescued as his inward has been. One gleam of God’s presence in his soul had lit its darkness, and turned tears into sparkling homes of the rainbow; one flash of that same presence in his outward life shall scatter all his foes with like swiftness. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

O Lord, rebuke me not in Thine anger. Psalm 6 A song of sorrow A. Maclaren, D. D. It is needless to look for a historical occasion of the Psalm; but to an oar that knows the tones of sorrow, or to a heart that has itself uttered them, the supposition that in these pathetic cries we hear only a representative Israelite bewailing the national ruin sounds singularly artificial. If ever the throb of personal anguish found tears and a Voice, it does so in this Psalm. Whoever wrote it wrote with his blood. There are in it no obvious references to events in the recorded life of David, and hence the ascription of it to him must rest on something else than the interpretation of the Psalm. The worth of this little plaintive cry depends on quite other considerations than the discovery of the name of the singer, or the nature of his sorrow. It is a transcript of a perennial experience, a guide fern road which all feet have to travel. Its stream runs turbid and broken at first, but calms and clears as it flows. It has four curves or windings, which can scarcely be called strophes without making too artificial a framework for such a simple and spontaneous gush of feeling. ( A. Maclaren, D. D. ) The cry of the penitent William Nicholson, D. D. The strains of this Psalm are two — vers. 1-7, the petition to God for himself; and vers. 8-10, an insultation over his enemies. I. THE PETITION. 1. A deprecation of evil. He prays God to avert His wrath. 2. A petition of good. He entreats to be partaker of God's favour, both to his body and to his soul. The petition he enforceth upon divers and weighty reasons: from the quantity and degrees of his calamity; from the continuance of it; from the consequences that were like to follow. That he was brought to death's door is seen by three symptoms, sighs and groans, tears, eyes melted away. Moreover, he had many ill-willers. II. THE INSULTATION. At last, receiving joy and comfort from his penitential tears, he begins to look up, and from his complaint he turns upon his enemies, who gaped after his death, and over them he insults (an old word for "he glories"). He rejects these reprobates from him with scorn and indignation. He assigns the cause in effect, because God had been moved by his prayer to reject them. Then follows his imprecation; made up of three ingredients, which he prays may light on them — shame and confusion, vexation, eversion. These two last he aggravates by the weight and speed. He desires that their vexation should be nor easy, nor mild, but very sore; and that their shame and overthrow linger not, but be present, hasty, and sudden. ( William Nicholson, D. D. ) The penitent suppliant John Donne. Though God will be no example of upbraiding or reproaching repented sins, when God hath so far expressed His love as to bring that sinner to that repentance, and so to mercy, yet, that He may perfect His own care, He exercises that repentant sinner with such medicinal corrections as may enable him to stand upright for the future. I. THE PERSON UPON WHOM DAVID TURNED FOR SUCCOUR. His first access is to God only. It is to God by name, not to any universal God. That name in which he comes to Him here is the name Jehovah, His radical, fundamental, primary, essential name. II. FOR WHAT HE SUPPLICATES. His prayer is but deprecatory; he does but pray that God would forbear him. He pretends no error, he enterprises no reversing of judgment; at first he dares not sue for pardon, he only desires a reprieve, a respite of execution, and that not absolutely either; but he would not be executed in hot blood, not in God's anger, not in His hot displeasure. To be rebuked was but to be chidden, to be chastened, to be beaten; and yet David was heartily afraid of the first, of the least of them, when it was done to him in anger. "Rebuke" here means reprove, convince by way of argument and disputation. What David deprecates is not the disputing, impleading, correcting, but that anger which might change the nature of all and make the physic poison. When there was no anger in the case David was a forward scholar to hearken to God's reasoning. Both these words "chasten" and "hot displeasure" are words of a heavy, vehement significance. David foresees that if God rebuke in anger it will come to chastening in hot displeasure. ( John Donne. ) The prayer of the a afflicted soul A. Symson. 1. In our afflictions we must look to God, and not to secondary causes. 2. To go to God for help in our distresses. When, then, we are wounded, we must go to one who can cure us, even Him who hath heaved us up, and cast us down again, and will again raise us up. 3. Prayer is our wings to fly to God in our affliction. 4. Means by which God brings us to obedience. (1) His Word. (2) His rod. If we refuse to be ruled by God's Word, then God will not fail to correct us with His rod. ( A. Symson. ) Rebuke needed Sir Richard Baker. As I deserve it for my sin, so I need it for my amendment, for without rebuking what amending? — what amending, indeed, without Thy rebuking? for, alas! the flesh flatters me, the world abuseth me, Satan deludes me; and now, O God, if Thou also shouldst hold Thy peace and wink at my follies, whom should I have — alas I whom could I have — to make me sensible of their foulness? If Thou shouldst not tell me, and tell me roundly, I went astray, how should I ever — alas I how could I ever — be brought to return into the right way? To Thy rebuking, therefore, I humbly submit myself. I know Thou intendest it for my amendment, and not for my confusion; for my conversion, and not for my subversion. It may be bitter in the tasting, but is most comfortable in the working; hard, perhaps, to digest, but most sovereign being digested. Yet I cannot endure Thou shouldst rebuke me in anger; I cannot endure it in affection, but I can less endure it in ability. When I consider with myself the many favours — undeserved favours — Thou hast vouchsafed unto me, and consider withal how little use, how ill use I have made of them all, though I know I have justly deserved Thy rebuking, yet my hope is still Thou wilt add this favour also, not to rebuke me in Thine anger. ( Sir Richard Baker. ) Angry chastening deprecated Sir Richard Baker. If Thy chastening be intended for reforming or for polishing, what wouldst Thou do with indignation, that tends to abolishing? ( Sir Richard Baker. ) Rebuke combined with anger Sir Richard Baker. Thy rebuking, O God, is to me as thunder, but Thine anger is as lightning; and is it not enough that Thou terrify my soul with the thunder of Thy rebuking, but Thou wilt also set this flax of my flesh on fire with the lightning of Thine anger? Thy rebuking of itself is a precious balm, but mixed with anger turns to a corrosive. ( Sir Richard Baker. ) God's anger terrible A certain king, being once very sad, his brother asked what ailed him. "Oh, brother," he said, "I have been a great sinner, and am afraid to die and appear before God in judgment." His brother only laughed at him for his melancholy thoughts. The king said nothing, but in the dead of night sent the executioner to sound his trumpet before his brother's door, that being the signal for a man to be led out to execution. Pale and trembling, his brother came in haste to the king and asked to know his crime. "Oh, brother," said the king, "you have never offended against me; but if the sight of the executioner be so dreadful, shall not I, who have grievously offended God, fear to be brought before the judgment seat of Jesus Christ?" Angerless reproof often quite effective Life of Bishop John Selwyn. There was a boy at Norfolk Island who had been brought from one of the rougher and wilder islands, and was consequently rebellious and difficult to manage. One day Mr. Selwyn spoke to him about something he had refused to do, and the lad, flying into a passion, struck him in the face. This was an unheard of thing for a Melanesian to do. Mr. Selwyn, not trusting himself to speak, turned on his heel and walked away. The boy was punished for the offence; and, being still unsatisfactory, was sent back to his own island without being baptized, and there relapsed into heathen ways. Many years afterwards Mr. Bice, the missionary who worked on that island, was sent for to a sick person who wanted him. He found this very man in a dying state, and begging to be baptized. He told Mr. Bice how often he thought of the teaching on Norfolk Island; and when the latter asked him by what name he should baptize him, he said, "Call me John Selwyn, because he taught me what Christ was like that day when I struck him; and I saw the colour mount in his face, but he never said a word except of love afterwards." Mr. Bice then baptized him, and he died soon after. ( Life of Bishop John Selwyn. ) The difference between a cross and a curse A. Symson. David deprecates not God's rebukes or corrections, but that He would not rebuke him in His anger. It is tree there is a great similitude between a curse and a cross, and oftentimes God's children have been deceived thereby, and through His hard handling of them have judged Him to have become their enemy; but indeed there is a great difference. And to the end ye may know whether they come from the hands of a loving God or no, consider these marks and tokens. 1. If they lead thee to a consideration of thy sin, which is the ground and cause of them, so that thou lookest not to the instrumental or second cause, but to thyself, the cause of all, they come from the hand of a loving God. 2. If they make thee leave off to sin and reject it, they come from a loving God. 3. If under thy cross thou run unto God, whom thou hast pierced, that He may deliver thee, and not say with that godless King Jehoram, Why should I attend any more upon the Lord? they come from a loving God. 4. The Cross worketh in the godly a wonderful humility and patience, so that they submit themselves under the hand of the living God, that they under it may be tamed, and from lions be made lambs. The wicked either howl (as do dogs that are beaten) through sense of their present stroke, or if they be humbled and seem patient, it is perforce as a lion which is caged and cannot stir. ( A. Symson. ) The anger of God as pure as His mercy A. Symson. But alas, those persons did not consider the difference betwixt the qualities that are in our sinful nature, and the essential properties which are in God; for He is angry and sins not. His anger is as pure as His mercy, for His justice is His anger, but our anger is mixed with sin, and therefore evil. ( A. Symson. ) God's anger against sin A. Symson. God will be angry at nothing in His creatures, but only sin, which bringeth man to destruction; for as if a father saw a serpent in his child's bosom, he would hate the serpent notwithstanding his love to the boy: so we are God's children, He loves that which He made of us, our body and soul, and hates that which the devil hath put in us, our sin. ( A. Symson. ) Neither chasten me in Thy hot displeasure. A revengeful God the creation of a guilty conscience Homilist. There are two knowledges of God; the one is the absolute, the other is the relative. The former comprehends God as He is, embraces the Infinite; the other comprehends only glances of Him, as He appears to the mind of the observer. There is but one being in the universe who has the former knowledge, and that is Christ. "No man hath seen God at any time; the Only Begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared Him." David's idea of God here was relative. He represents the Eternal as He appeared to him in the particular state of mind which he experienced. We make two remarks on his idea of God's "hot displeasure." I. IT WAS GENERATED IN A GUILTY CONSCIENCE BY GREAT SUFFERING. The writer of this Psalm was involved in the greatest distress both in body and in mind. 1. That he was conscious of having wronged his Maker. His conscience robes infinite love with vengeance. 2. He was conscious of having deserved God's displeasure. He felt that the sufferings he was enduring were penal inflictions, and he justly deserved them. Had his conscience been appeased by atoning love, the very sufferings he was enduring would have led him to regard the great God as a loving Father disciplining him for a higher life, and not as a wrathful God visiting him in His hot displeasure. God is to you according to your moral state. II. IT WAS REMOVED FROM HIS GUILTY CONSCIENCE BY EARNEST PRAYER. His prayer for mercy is intensely importunate. "O Lord, rebuke me not in Thine anger," etc. "Have mercy upon me, O Lord." "O Lord, heal me." "O Lord, deliver soul," etc. What is the result of his prayer? "Depart from me all ye workers of iniquity, for the Lord hath heard the voice of my weeping," etc. True prayer does two things. 1. Modifies for the better the mind of the suppliant. It tends to quicken, to calm, to elevate the soul. 2. Secures the necessary assistance of the God of love. One great truth that comes up from the whole of these remarks is that man's destiny depends upon his moral state, and that no system can effectually help him, that does not bring his heart into a right relation with God. So long as God appears to him burning with hot displeasure he must be in an agony like that which the Psalmist here describes. The mission of Christianity is to bring men into this happy relation. ( Homilist. ) Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak. Psalm 6:2 Cure for the soul's weakness Thomas Spurgeon. There is a very immediate connection between soul sickness and bodily ailments. The material affects the mental, and presently the mental affects the soul. When David was weak in body he became more than ever conscious of his sinful condition before God. And the enemy took advantage of his weakness and oppressed him when his heart was sore sick. The saint's extremity becomes the devil's opportunity to annoy and to distress him. But he was by no means forsaken of his God. I. THE COMPLAINT — Soul weakness. It is not a disease exactly, and yet there are points about it which make it very much like a disease. Many persons cannot say they are ill, but there is a lack of physical force, a lack of stamina. They are the weaklings of the flock; and it is so in Christian experience. There are Christians lacking that power which makes a man act like a man, and speak like a man, and think with vigour and purpose, Next to listlessness, there is with these invalids a sort of fretfulness. Everything — even the grasshopper — becomes a burden to them. Then there comes to these poor sick souls a sort of fearfulness, their nervous force has gone. These people are very retiring in disposition — nervous, and bashful, and hesitating, very timid and timorous. What are the causes of this spiritual disease? Some are born frail. But the weakness is often due to the disease of harbouring unkind thoughts about anybody. An unhealthy climate is often the reason, physically speaking, for weakness of health. Weakness may be due to unwholesomeness of food. II. THE PRESCRIPTION. "Have mercy upon me, O Lord." God's mercy must be the antidote for my misery. This is the only remedy for spiritual weakness. If I go to the physician and complain of weakness he will probably give me some medicine which may not be very palatable. Well, then, take the medicine. ( Thomas Spurgeon. ) The cry for mercy A. Symson. To fly and escape the anger of God, he sees no means in heaven or in earth, and therefore he retires himself to God, even to Him who wounded him, that He might heal him. He flies not with Adam to the bush, nor with Saul to the witch, nor with Jonas to Tarshish, but he appeals from an angry and just God to a merciful God. Next, observe what David craves — mercy; whereby we may perceive that he was brought to a consideration of his own misery, or else he needed not to have asked for mercy. Then it is necessary, that to the end we may more effectually crave pardon, every one of us first have a sense and feeling of our own sin and misery. Moreover, see that David doth not present his merits, whereby to redeem the filthiness of his sins, neither yet prayers, praises, almsdeeds, victory over God's foes, wherein he was frequent, but he leaveth them all as a broken reed, to the which he could not well lean in the day of his spiritual temptation, and hath his only refuge in God's mercy. The merits of men (alas!) what are they? The best works we do are so full of imperfections that there is more dross than gold in them. What man would be content for good gold to receive such coin as is nearby altogether dross? And think ye God for His perfect law, which He gave us to observe and do, will receive our imperfect works? David, under the name of mercy, includeth all things, according to that of Jacob to his brother Esau, "I have gotten mercy, and therefore I have gotten all things." Desirest thou anything at God's hands? Cry for mercy, out of which fountain all good things will spring to thee. The blind men, seeking their sight, cried, "Have mercy upon us, Thou Son of David." The Canaanite, who had her daughter possessed, cried, "Have mercy upon me." If ye have purchased the King's pardon, then ye may enjoy the privileges of His kingdom; if ye have mercy, ye have all that God can give you, ye have title to Christ, to heaven, to all the creatures, ye are freed and delivered from the prison of hell. ( A. Symson. ) A good plea for the penitent Sir Richard Baker. But is this not a weak plea, to allege weakness for a plea? weak indeed with men who commonly tread hardest upon the weakest, and are ever going over where the hedge is lowest; but no weak plea with God, whose mercy is ever ready upon all occasions, and then most when there is most need; and seeing there is greatest need where there is greatest weakness, therefore no plea with God so strong as this, Have mercy upon me, O God, for I am weak. But why should David pray for mercy to help his weakness? for what can mercy do? Mercy can but pity his weakness; it is strength that must relieve it. But is it not that mercy, I may say; is as the steward of God's house, and hath the command of all He hath; that if wisdom be wanting for direction, mercy can procure it; if justice be wanting for defence, mercy can obtain it; if strength be wanting for support, mercy can command it; and therefore no plea so perfect to be urged with God as this, Have mercy upon me, O God, for I am weak? But why should David make his weakness a motive to God for mercy? for is not weakness an effect of sin? and can God love the effect when He hates the cause? But it is not the weakness in David that God loves, but the acknowledging of his weakness; for what is this but the true humility? and who knows not in how high account such humility is with God, seeing it is indeed of this wonderful condition, that though nothing be so low, yet nothing reacheth so high, and therefore no motive so fit to move God as this, Have mercy upon me, O God, for I am weak. Mercy, indeed, looks down upon no object so directly as upon weakness, and weakness looks up to no object so directly as to mercy; and therefore they cannot choose but meet, and meeting, not choose but embrace each other: mercy, weakness as her client; weakness, mercy as her patron; that no plea can be so strong with God as this, Have mercy upon me, O God, for I am weak. ( Sir Richard Baker. ) An argument taken from weakness A. Symson B. D. But behold what rhetoric he trieth to move God to cure him: "I am weak"; an argument taken from his weakness; which indeed were a weak argument to move any man to show his favour, but is a strong argument to prevail with God. If a diseased person would come to a physician, and only lament the heaviness of his sickness, he would say, "God help thee"; or an oppressed person come to a lawyer, and show him the estate of his action and ask his advice, he would answer, "That is a golden question"; or to a merchant to crave raiment, he will either have present money or a surety; or a courtier for favour, you must have your reward ready in your hand. But coming before God, the most forcible argument ye can use is your necessity, poverty, tears, misery, unworthiness, and confessing them to Him, it shall be an open door to furnish you with all things that He hath. ( A. Symson B. D. ) A forcible plea A. Symson B. D. The tears of our misery are forcible arrows to pierce the heart of our heavenly Father, to deliver us and pity our hard case. The beggars lay open their sores to the view of the world, that the more they may move men to pity them. So let us deplore our miseries to God, that He, with the pitiful Samaritan, at the sight of our wounds may help us in due time. ( A. Symson B. D. ) O Lord, heal me. Healing P. B. Tower, M. A. There is something very soothing, very beautiful in that word "Heal." It seems so full of beneficence, so full of restoration, so full of balm. "Heal," so near "Health" — it is a beautiful word. The healing is found in Him. There are some medicines which are called polychrists, they heal so many diseases. Heaven knows but one Polychrist. It is one to heal not only many diseases, but all, and that one is the touch of Christ. ( P. B. Tower, M. A. ) My soul is sore vexed. Psalm 6:3 Yoke fellows in sin, yoke fellows in punishment A. Symson, B. D. Yoke fellows in sin are yoke fellows in pain; the soul is punished for informing, the body for performing, and as both the informer and performer, the cause and the instrument, so shall the stirrer up of sin and executor be punished. ( A. Symson, B. D. ) But Thou, O Lord, how long? The delays of God A. Symson, B. D. 1. That there is an appointed time, which God hath measured, for the crosses of all His children, before which time they shall not be delivered, and for which they must patiently attend, not thinking to prescribe time to God for their delivery or limit the Holy One of Israel. The Israelites remained in Egypt till the complete number of 430 years were accomplished. Joseph was three years and more in the prison till the appointed time of his delivery came. The Jews remained 70 years in Babylon. So that as the physician appointeth certain times to the patient, both wherein he must fast and be dieted, and wherein he must take recreation: so God knoweth the convenient times both of our humiliation and exaltation. 2. See the impatiency of our natures in our miseries, our flesh still rebelling against the Spirit, which oftentimes forgetteth itself so far that it will enter into reasoning with God, and quarrelling with Him, as we may read of Job, Jonas, etc., and here also of David. 3. Albeit the Lord delay His coming to relieve His saints, yet He hath great cause if we ponder it; for, when we were in the heat of our sins, many times He cried by the mouth of His prophets, "O fools, how long will you continue in your folly?" and we would not hear. And therefore, when we are in the heat of our pains, thinking long, yea, every day a year till we are delivered, no wonder it is if God will not hear. Let us consider with ourselves the just dealing of God with us, that. as He cried, and we would not hear; so now we cry, and He will not hear. ( A. Symson, B. D. ) Broken prayers G. Edward Young. I. AN INSTANCE OF WHAT MAY BE CALLED A BROKEN PRAYER. Dr. Maclaren calls it "daring and pregnant in its incompleteness." Is it not natural that prayer should often be incomplete? The man who has never broken down in his prayer has hardly yet learned to pray. 1. Prayer must be broken at times, because some petitions we would offer we may not. Prayer has sometimes to be restrained. 2. Because we cannot tell how to pray. True piety has its dilemmas. What may precisely meet our need cannot always be defined. 3. Because words cannot compass our desires. The intensest feelings of our hearts cannot find adequate expression. II. BROKEN PRAYERS MAY BE THE MOST EARNEST EXPRESSIONS OF THE SOUL. The Psalmist's very earnestness brings him to a standstill. Such a break is the safety valve of the impassioned soul. Prayer is often most sincere when it is least eloquent. A sob may be a real prayer. III. THAT PRAYERS ARE BROKEN DOES NOT PREVENT THEM FROM BEING HEARD AND ANSWERED. If this Psalm opens amid the thick gloom of troublous misgiving, it does not close till a new light has chased these shadows away. However poor and faltering our own words, we shall not be disappointed about an answer. God can interpret the prayer that has never even found utterance. When a man begins to pray, however brokenly, light is not far off. ( G. Edward Young. ) Return, O Lord, deliver my soul. Psalm 6:4 A postulatory prayer John Donne. "O Lord, return" implies a former presence, a present absence, and a confidence for the future. This is God's return to us, in a general apprehension. After He hath made us, and blest us in our nature and by His natural means, He returns to make us again, to make us better, first by His preventing grace and then by a succession of His particular graces. In Scripture there are three significations of the word translated "return." 1. To return to that place to which a thing is naturally affected. So heavy things return to the centre, and light things to the expansion. The Church is God's place, God's centre, to which He is naturally affected. 2. The word is also referred to the passion of God, to the anger of God; and so the returning of God — that is, of God's anger — is the allaying, the becalming, the departing of His anger. When God returns, God stays; His anger is returned from us, but God is still with us. 3. The word applies to our returning to Him. There goes no more to salvation but such a turning. So that this returning of the Lord is an operative, an effectual returning, that tunes our hearts, and eyes, and hands, and feet to the ways of God, and produces in us repentance and obedience; for these be the two legs which our conversion to God stands upon. When the Lord comes to us by any way, though He come in corrections, in chastisements, not to turn to Him is an irreverent and unrespective negligence We come now to the reasons of these petitions in David's prayer. His first reason is grounded on God Himself. "Do it for Thy mercy's sake." And in his second reason, though David himself and all men with him seem to have a part, yet at last we shall see the reason itself to determine wholly or entirely in God, too, and in His glory. "Do it, Lord, for in death there is no remembrance of Thee." ( John Donne. ) The obscured presence of God A. Symson. As the sun goeth not out of Thee, though it may be obscured by overcasting clouds, or some other natural impediments, so, albeit the clouds of our sins and miseries hide the fair, shining face of God from us, yet He will pierce through and dissipate those clouds, and, shine clearly upon us in His own appointed time. God is said to "return to us," not by change of place, for He is in all places, but by the dispensation of His gracious providence, and declaration of His new mercies and benefits to us. ( A. Symson. ) For the sake of mercy Sir Richard Baker. Indeed, this motive, for His mercy's sake, is the first mover of all motives to God for showing His favour. He had never delivered the Israelites out of Egypt but for His mercy's sake; He had never saved Noah in the ark but for His mercy's sake; but, above all, He had never sent His Son to save the world but for His mercy's sake. And how, then, can I doubt, and not rather be confident, that for His mercy's sake He will also deliver my soul and save me? Never, therefore, my soul, look after any further motives; for upon this motive will I set up my rest. His mercy shall be both my anchor and my harbour; it shall be both my armour and my fortress; it shall be both my ransom and my garland; it shall be both my deliverance and my salvation. ( Sir Richard Baker. ) In death there is no remembrance of Thee. Psalm 6:5 Does consciousness cease with death David Caldwell, A. M. ? — There is some obscurity in these words, literally understood. They at least seem to teach that all thought and consciousness ceased with man at his death. If that be their meaning, they certainly show that David's views of a future life were quite defective. If that be their meaning, we may well say, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. We can hardly believe, however, that David meant to teach that thought and consciousness ceased with man at death. The death here intended is probably the second death, and the grave intended the prison of the lost: that is the "death," and that the "grave," from which David prays to be saved — the death and the grave of "both body and soul in hell." And surely there is no grateful remembrance of, and giving thanks to, God there. On the contrary, all who have experienced that death, and descended into that grave, gnaw their tongues for pain, and blaspheme the God of heaven. In view of such an issue, well might David pray, "Return, O Lord, deliver my soul; O save me for Thy mercies' sake." For surely a more terrific thought cannot be presented to the human soul, than the thought that it must remain a pining and suffering creature forever, a moral blot on every part of the universe to which it may flee; hateful in its own eyes, and hateful in the eyes of God. ( David Caldwell, A. M. ) In the grave who shall give Thee thanks? Death makes life important W. J. Stracey, M. A. This Psalm is the first of those called penitential, and composed in confession of sin. From consideration of birth sin the writer turns to the littleness of man, and the shortness of life compared with God's greatness and goodness. As references to the silence of the grave and the departure of the dead occur frequently, we may ask in what sense we are to take such words. David evidently understood that this life is our only period of probation. He had apprehensions of a judgment day. David felt that, whatever he was to be, to become, to receive, or to suffer, in the state beyond the grave, was all to be begun while he was in the flesh. David felt how essential to his happiness it was to obtain God's favour, and that at once, without delay. All our hopes beyond the grave rest on our few years' passage through this life. There is no preparation after it. We are hastening on to the unalterable state, where we shall praise God for over, or never. We are like the sculptor, chiselling an inscription upon marble. Well done or badly done, clearly engraved or badly formed, or wrongly spelt, still those letters remain in imperishable characters. The sculptor's success, or his mistakes, both remain; no time will fade, no water will wash away, what is engraved in stone. So with our heavenly and eternal work, "the time is short"; but its records and its effects are lasting; they endure from generation to generation. Let us be stirred up by such thoughts to engrave for ourselves in the imperishable records of the Book of Life the record of a life spent by us, through God's grace, to His honour and in His service. ( W. J. Stracey, M. A. ) The Psalmist's Sheol A. Maclaren, D. D. The second plea is striking both in its view of the condition of the dead, and in its use of that view as an argument with God. Like many other psalmists, the writer thinks of Sheol as the common gathering place of the departed, a dim region where they live a poor shadowy life, inactive, joyless, and all but godless, inasmuch as praise, fellowship, and service with Him have ceased. That view is equally compatible with the belief in a resurrection, and the denial of it, for it assumes continued individual consciousness. It is the prevailing tone in the Psalter, and in Job and Ecclesiastes. But in some Psalms which embody the highest rapture of inward and musical devotion the sense of present .union with God bears up the Psalmist into the sunlight of the assurance that against such a union death can have no power, and we see the hope of immortality in the very act of dawning on the devout soul. May we not say that the subjective experience of the reality of communion with God now is still the path by which the certainty of its perpetuity in a future life is reached? The objective proof in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is verified by this experience. The psalmists had not the former, but, having the latter, they attained to at all events occasional confidence in a blessed life beyond. ( A. Maclaren, D. D. ) A plea for continued life A. Symson, B. D. 1. Concerning death, consider first, that there is a necessity of DEATH laid upon all flesh, wise men and fools, king and prophet, etc., neither the grandeur of the king nor ho

6:1-7 These verses speak the language of a heart truly humbled, of a broken and contrite spirit under great afflictions, sent to awaken conscience and mortify corruption. Sickness brought sin to his remembrance, and he looked upon it as a token of God's displeasure against him. The affliction of his body will be tolerable, if he has comfort in his soul. Christ's sorest complaint, in his sufferings, was of the trouble of his soul, and the want of his Father's smiles. Every page of Scripture proclaims the fact, that salvation is only of the Lord. Man is a sinner, his case can only be reached by mercy; and never is mercy more illustrious than in restoring backsliders. With good reason we may pray, that if it be the will of God, and he has any further work for us or our friends to do in this world, he will yet spare us or them to serve him. To depart and be with Christ is happiest for the saints; but for them to abide in the flesh is more profitable for the church. 6:8-10 What a sudden change is here! Having made his request known to God, the psalmist is confident that his sorrow will be turned into joy. By the workings of God's grace upon his heart, he knew his prayer was accepted, and did not doubt but it would, in due time, be answered. His prayers will be accepted, coming up out of the hands of Christ the Mediator. The word signifies prayer made to God, the righteous Judge, as the God of his righteousness, who would plead his cause, and right his wrongs. A believer, through the blood and righteousness of Christ, can go to God as a righteous God, and plead with him for pardon and cleansing, who is just and faithful to grant both. He prays for the conversion of his enemies, or foretells their ruin.